I don’t know whether it was because the place was German or whether it was that the proprietor produced for Nick such a Moselle as you didn’t come across every day even in that faraway year. But as we sipped the last of it and debated how we might worthily spend our last evening on our native shore, Nick casually proposed:
“Let’s go and see Zephine.”
I am not usually the one to lag behind. But Nick had refused, with opprobrious implications, to play with me, and it seemed good to me to refuse to play with Nick.
“Come on, Herb,” he persisted. “Don’t be a spotted zebra. Let’s go find Zephine.” And he called for the bill.
“How on earth do you propose to find Zephine at this time of day—and we sailing for Norway at ten to-morrow morning?”
“Where do you think I was born—Island Pond?” inquired Nick suavely. “There’s a telephone book in front of your nose, and a directory beside it. In addition to which I might remind you that her address was in the catalogue.”
“What was it?” I asked. I knew in my reluctant soul that if Nick had made up his mind there was no use sulking.
“O, Corlear’s Hook some place,” answered Nick, charming the heart of an anxious-looking waiter—if the heart may be charmed by that which is put into the hand.
“Corlear’s Hook!” I exclaimed. “She’s moved then, though it sounds enough like Zephine. But it’s some way from Washington Bridge.”
Nick didn’t mind, however. Neither the taxi man who presently undertook to jounce us from one end of Manhattan Island to the other. And I am happy to add that we ran over no one on the way, though we did run out of gasoline. Incidentally Nick soothed my ruffled feelings by making me tell him about Zephine all over again. I fancied, though, it was really the Corlear’s Hook that caught him. He made me promise that I would say nothing to Zephine about the picture.